Build trust
In order to start having conversations about ethnicity pay gaps and developing strategies for tackling them, it is vital that trust is built within an organisation, according to David Mba, vice-chancellor of Birmingham City University.
He said: “We have to be transparent. What is the best way to approach this? That is the conversation that we should all be having. Until we are able to begin to publish and openly make [ethnicity pay gap reporting] available, there will be that issue of trust."
Mba went on to emphasise the importance of building trust and inclusion within the recruitment and promotion stages of the employee lifecycle. He said: “Birmingham has about a 53% minority population; my staff will represent not just my students but the city we face.
“That means that we try to ensure that we are reaching the different communities, encouraging them to apply. What has to be clear is the criteria [around promotions]. But also things like who's on the on the promotion panel? Do you have a diverse group of that represents the staffing body that's applying for promotion?”
Educate line managers
Shauna Roper, chief of staff at financial services provider HSBC, said that educating line managers about the impact of ethnicity pay gaps is a crucial part of closing them.
She said: “Help to educate line managers on the definition of a pay gap. Too often, line managers are unable to explain the definition of a pay gap, so it's brought to their employees with mass confusion. If you don't know your data, someone else will own your story. Mandate your own transparency; publish your ethnicity pay gap, every year, regardless of whether it's a requirement or not.”
Read more: Ethnicity pay gap hitting Caribbean workers hardest
Roper also explained how leaders should sponsor diverse talent. She advised: “Actively sponsor diverse talent for high-visibility. We know that sponsorship is effective when done with personal intention. Take personal accountability of sponsoring every priority colleague into senior decision-making roles.
“Decision-making is crucial. If you're a decision-maker, you have influence; and if you have influence, you can make change. It doesn't just make the opportunity achievable, it changes the culture and the mindset of that organisation, because diversity and talent can coexist.”
Include lived experiences in your data reporting
Bernadette Thompson, executive director of equality, diversity and inclusion at King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, emphasised the importance of including lived experience within pay gap reporting, in order to reflect a true workforce.
She said: “Let's include that lived experience of people within the organisation. Collect the data, even though it's not mandatory. It is not the same as a gender pay gap. It's not as easy to cut the data like that. And let's not be lazy with collecting data. Let us segment it, and let it be precise.”
Thompson went on to explain that, no matter how small your data set might be, leaders must act on it and measure how much progress is being made.
She said: “Get the data, but don't just sit on the data; act on the data that you have. Some of you might already have some data. Don't ask for more, act on what you already have. Let's report the outcomes. Let's see the progress that we’ll be starting to make.”
Read more: Ethnicity pay gap reporting in the US and UK and the power of pay auditing
The dangers of rigid frameworks
One of the issues with ethnicity reporting is using a rigid framework to measure it, stated Anthony Horrigan, cofounder of Spktral, a pay gap analysis consultancy.
He said: “The most important thing, which is my biggest worry with the mandatory ethnicity and disability reporting, is a rigid framework, because every organisation is different. Some of the classifications for ethnicity don't quite align with the people you have, so you're kind of forced into narrow stovepipes.
“If you're able to talk about people in the way that they see themselves, the chances are they're engaging with you a lot more. The good news is that there is a framework out there that is a lot more applicable and that's the Disability Confident scheme. The Disability Confident scheme gets you to talk about the people, your demographics, and then it gets you to ask questions about where people move and how they are.”
Horrigan added that companies should try and gather their own data rather than replying on the ONS, as this data can often be outdated and inaccurate.
He said: “There's an easy way to [avoid using inaccurate data] and that's for individual organisations to gather their own data. Now, that comes with a huge, huge caveat. What you can't afford to do is compare yourself to somebody else, because, even though we might all look the same, you will be comparing cheetahs with jaguars, with lions. You can't look at another organisation's pay gap and compare it against your leader boards.
“I would suggest the best league table to have is yourself, over time, to see how you're actually improving and the interventions that you made that led to a specific improvement.”
